Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!crdgw1!crdgw1.ge.com!barnett
From: barnett@crdgw1.crd.ge.com (Bruce G. Barnett)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.news
Subject: Re: Playing with the colormaps
Message-ID: <406@crdgw1.crd.ge.com>
Date: 16 May 89 02:59:07 GMT
References: <1494@murtoa.cs.mu.oz.au>
Sender: news@crdgw1.crd.ge.com
Reply-To: barnett@crdgw1.crd.ge.com (Bruce G. Barnett)
Organization: GE Corp. R & D, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 26
In-reply-to: mwp@cs.mu.oz.au (Michael Paddon)

In article <1494@murtoa.cs.mu.oz.au>, mwp@cs (Michael Paddon) writes:

>As a footnote, it seems that Sun were very shortsighted if there is
>no way to get the colors you really asked for. Lots of real world
>applications need just that (in particular, mine does :-).

The model may have a few warts, but it is a useful model in several
applications:

	You have a true color (24-bit) system
	You have a black&white screen
	You have to share the window with 10 other applications, each
		with it's own color map.
	You ask for a thousand different colors, but only display 200
		at a time, and the system can only display 256
		different colors.

Remember, the NeWS model is DISPLAY INDEPENDANT.
The application may not be capable of displaying what you ask for,
but the window server tries to display the best approximation to the
color you asked for. Your applications are therefore portable to displays of
a different type.

--
Bruce G. Barnett	<barnett@crdgw1.ge.com>  a.k.a. <barnett@[192.35.44.4]>
			uunet!crdgw1.ge.com!barnett barnett@crdgw1.UUCP